♪ >> We are promoting a safer experience for mom.

And it's a great experience for me.

The push for better health at the beginning of life.

>> So these Beal will eliminate hope chances and opportunities.

>> Critics of the proposed say for Kentucky Act say it will tear people down instead of building them all.

What I really want to come out of it is people feeling a little bit more comfortable day out what it means for their business.

And is artificial intelligence and economic plus or -4 Kentucky.

>> Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KU Team Millennium Fund.

♪ ♪ Good evening and welcome to Kentucky EDITION for this Tuesday January.

The 30th, I'm Renee Shaw.

Thank you for spending some of your Tuesday night with us.

>> Kentucky's infant and maternal mortality rates are higher than the national average in Kentucky.

According to the CDC.

But there are efforts in the Kentucky General Assembly to help mothers and their babies.

Our Clayton Dalton has more on some Senate bills focused on protecting Kentucky's moms.

♪ >> According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, approximately 35,000 at-home births occur each year around.

One-fourth of those births are unplanned or unattended by any health care professional Senate Bill 89 sponsored by northern Kentucky, Republican Shelley Funky from Meyer aims to KET at home births as safe as possible and give Kentucky women more birthing options.

>> If you are a mother that is receiving Medicaid help and supports during your pregnancy that Medicaid helping financial supports can now be used for a license practicing midlife Nlc pm.

And that that home birth can now be billed to Medicaid.

>> According to the Kentucky Board of Nursing, licensed certified professional midwives or else, the PM's provide care to women and families during pregnancy, childbirth.

And the postpartum period.

>> They're now 18 states, including to plus DC that have implemented some form of Medicaid reimbursement for certified professional and we're free services.

Senate Bill 89 spill.

What at Kentucky to that list that would cover Elsie PM Services.

The Lauder says that women with Medicaid coverage do not want traditional hospital births.

>> Are left with poor options.

So we see people doing one of the following things and some of the situations they either forgo the care that they truly desire and they plan a hospital birth, which is covered by their Medicaid plan.

>> They may make sacrifices and find a way to pay out of pocket for a burst with their LC PM and not utilize their Medicaid coverage or they might choose to have a home birth without a train provider or on some occasions without any provider at all.

Choices in childbirth should not be limited to those who have the ability to pay out of pocket.

>> Louisville, Democrat Kasey Chambers, Armstrong said she believes the bill is a basic step in the right direction.

>> The numbers that stick with me are that 90% of maternal mortalities are preventable.

And that the reason the preventable is not because we need fancy interventions or more high-tech care.

We just need basic access to care.

And I believe this bill would do that.

>> Senate Bill, 70 for a separate measure sponsored by Senator Frank from Meyer.

Also deals with maternal health.

The bill requires the Department for Public Health to oversee a state board that reviews child and maternal deaths, although that board currently exist, it is not required under Kentucky law.

Both bills passed out of committee with unanimous bipartisan support and moved to the Senate floor for consideration for Kentucky edition.

I'm Clayton Dalton.

>> Thank you, Clayton.

Now legislation to help new parents and even caregivers is also advancing at the state Capitol House Bill.

One, 79 expanding access to paid family leave.

Pass the full house yesterday by a vote of 92 to one.

The measure would make paid family leave insurance available to Kentucky employers.

But the bill stopped short of requiring employers to offer it.

Republican Representative Samara have run who sponsored the bill explains.

>> This is a market driven policy proposal that includes no mandates on employers.

Workers are families.

And as long as I'm working on this policy, there will not be any mandates on small businesses for paid family leave.

Now, let me be clear.

This legislation will not be enough for everyone, but my humble opinion.

It's more important past good policy, rather than to completely deprived Kentucky families for the opportunity that any type of paid family leave >> if employers offer the benefit, the bill would provide temporary wage replacement for workers who need to take off to bond with a newborn or care for a loved one.

Supporters see it as a way to help employers attract an retain workers.

House Bill one, 79 is now in the possession of the state Senate.

How long should someone be locked up for a crime?

Well, the answer depends if you're the victim offender or even an attorney in a case and light of a proposed crime bill in Frankfort, we went outside the Statehouse to speak with those who lived behind bars and those who would put people there.

>> Jeremy Thompson has been police seen Kentucky streets for seen some of the same things over and over for violent crimes.

That's why Thompson and other law enforcement support the Safer Kentucky Act, which passed in the House last week.

It stiffens consequences for repeat violent offenders.

So we're talking about a small group that has proven over and over again that they are dangerous to society and they've had all the changes that they had prior leading up to these 3rd and subsequent offenses.

3 strikes provision would put people behind bars for life.

They commit a 3rd Fila defense years ago.

60 year-old Red Re gets Bellinger would have fit that Bill.

>> Offers manslaughter charge.

I was arrested for what I thought I was protecting myself.

>> He we drew.

He shot a shot.

He gone on here.

They gave me 10 years for manslaughter.

Bellinger got out and 5 years with the conditional release.

>> He had to get a job and stay out of trouble.

But he went back to the same life and friends.

He KET I get in the car would free him.

>> Didn't have enough in the day as what you do in had you do if you steal my free.

I mean, the neighbor who and we would to a place in when into a cleaners.

Seeing him a huge Adam go get my clothes well on Benoit to me, he had just robbed the place before I get into cars and he robbed the claims.

>> With 2 more robbery charges, Bellinger became labeled a persistent felony offender.

Kentucky's longstanding pfo statute increased his jail time.

>> And I was found guilty of 2020 20 p a full enhanced them to life life life all because I didn't have enough to me too.

Not be a snitch.

I was holding onto the street.

Create instead of real sense.

Bellinger made his case for parole.

>> He got out in 12 years.

But the Safer Kentucky Act would likely deny parole and probation for people like Bellinger.

Not because he hurt anyone, but because the bill at certain robberies and possessing a gun illegally to Kentucky's list of violent crimes.

>> A lack of opportunity to show us changes.

And if a person doesn't have changes, they have no hope.

So these Beal will eliminate hope chances and opportunities.

>> As a prosecutor in Lexington, Kimberly Baird has to juggle justice for both offenders and victims.

Opponents of pass Bill 5 say it will lead to more people being locked up.

Baird says at least in Fayette County, she's already under pressure to not sent to the full extent.

There are people in the Department of Corrections who are saying >> in the local jails are saying the prison and jails are overcrowded.

So they're putting pressure on a judge is.

>> To not to to choose probation.

First.

>> Over sending them to present.

The argument comes up very quickly that we're going to put more people in jail.

My response to that would be are we really?

Because we're putting the same people back in jail.

>> Marcus Jackson served time in Kentucky through programs in prison.

He connected with his daughter.

Learn how to treat drinking water.

But Jackson says that support is really accessible to people with long sentences in that bill.

If you want to lock people up, don't you have something in place when I come through that door?

>> You should ask me what was your thought and what we should dreams before.

Whatever happened to happen and how can we get you back to that for Kentucky edition of John Leffler.

>> Thank you.

June House Bill 5 cleared the full House late last week.

It's now in the possession of the state Senate for consideration there.

Adult businesses might have to move or even close if House Bill to our Senate Bill.

One, 47 become law.

Those bills would ban adult businesses from operating within the average size of a city block 933 feet of a child care facility park place of worship and many other places where you find children.

The bills are from Representative Nancy Tate and Senator Lindsey Titian are both Republicans.

>> Our joint legislation aims to protect those in society who are the most vulnerable and subset to fall to the adverse effects of the idled or E entertainment industry, primarily children for decades.

Minors under the age of 18 have been protected from sexual activity, sexual materials and sexual performances.

This language is a continuance in the spirit at these previous public protections.

Children should be given the opportunity to develop even without thinking about sex and sexual preferences.

And it is our responsibility as adults to protect the innocence of their minds and bodies guards to drag performances.

>> And those have been appearing in public places in parks and parades.

And some of those have been sexually explicit content.

So therefore, it would limit those types of performances.

Again, this is not to limit drag.

This is not to limit access to adult content.

It is strictly to KET children away from sexually explicit content.

>> Senator Titian or who you just heard from says her bill is only for sexual actions addressing a drive by itself, doesn't qualify.

Businesses already in place will have a 5 year grace period to comply.

Now on to another House Bill House Bill 6, the Republican budget proposal does increase funding for public education.

But Lee's pay raises for teachers and other school personnel to individual school districts, a Bowling Green state lawmaker who spent decades in education would like to see more in the way of a salary increase for school employees.

>> I'm going to fight for education.

Republican State Representative Kevin Jackson spent 32 years as a teacher and coach and served 5 years on the board of Education for Warren County.

Public Schools.

>> That's my passion.

That's what I know.

That's what I understand.

>> He says he's mostly pleased with the House GOP budget plan, calling it a lean budget that's fiscally responsible.

>> We put a lot of money into certain things in education like paying down the pitch that we put money in for health insurance for employees.

We put money in to try to get transportation funding up.

>> The two-year budget calls for an overall 6% increase in seek funding.

Seek support education, excellence in Kentucky is the formula used to allocate funding to school districts as an educator, I look at what are the boots on the ground?

What are the teachers, one of the classified personnel?

What are they going to be able >> to benefit from this?

>> In his conversations with area administrators, including Warren County, Public Schools, Superintendent Rob Clayton and Superintendent Gary Fields of Bowling Green, Independent schools.

They say the allocation would provide a one to 2% pay increase for faculty and staff.

>> I just don't think that's enough.

Our teachers have been through and classified personnel have been through COVID.

We've been through the tornadoes that came through here.

We've been through a lot of things over the last 3 or 4 years.

We would just like to send a message to our teachers and staff that we appreciate you.

We appreciate what you do on a daily basis.

Jack.

>> Sinn says he would like to see along the lines of a 5% pay increase for teachers and classified staff without having to cut money for other programs.

He doesn't think Governor Andy Beshear's proposed 11% pay increase is feasible.

>> Ideal world 11% sounds good and would be overwhelmingly popular.

But that's probably not realistic.

11 percentage just above and beyond.

I think what we could do right now.

>> He says in the meantime, discussions continue in Frankfort about how to move forward and we're willing to talk to work with leadership and and the entire caucus and see what is best for our teachers across the state Jackson, who was among 25 new state representatives last year says he feels more at ease in his second session.

>> And I'm loving it.

I enjoy it.

And hopefully we're going to be able to do some good things for the people back home.

>> For Kentucky edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Thanks so much.

Lower for that report.

Now, there could be several constitutional amendments on Kentucky's ballot for voters to consider in November one possible amendment is detailed in House Bill 3.41.

Which cleared the full house today.

The bill would ask voters to decide if the state constitution should be amended to prevent non-citizens from voting.

The bill sponsor, Republican Representative Michael Meredith says the bill seeks to close a loophole in the state's current election laws.

>> What our Constitution currently does is it sets a floor on who must be allowed to vote in that citizens of the state and citizens.

The United States.

And then it has 3 prohibited classes of people who are denied the vote.

Because of the way that structure E is where seeking to be proactive with this amendment.

Because what we have seen in other states is that local governments have in some places change their local charters.

Under similar constitutional language in those states.

To allow non-citizens to vote in the elections there within their jurisdictions.

And so this will just simply make sure.

Closes what could be a potential loophole that the courts could act upon or local governments might be able to act upon for some road.

General Assembly might be able to act upon in the future to allow non-citizens to vote within the Commonwealth.

>> Many Democratic state lawmakers spoke against the bill in the House, including representative Kulkarni who was also an immigration attorney.

>> Each of us in each of our districts have individuals that have U.S. citizen children who go to school that are very involved in their communities, their neighborhoods, their local districts that are simply waiting.

And yes, it might be due to our federal immigration system.

But what we're doing is disenfranchising thousands.

10's of thousands of families from having a say in what happens to their citizen children.

It is a bill in search of a problem that we have established does not exist and it will impact negatively.

A lot of families that we call constituents.

>> House Bill 3.41 went on to pass the House today.

81 to 15 it now heads to the Senate for consideration there.

Also on the House floor today, a pair of Republican lawmakers advanced a resolution urging Democratic Governor Andy Beshear to support Texas's Republican Governor Greg Abbott's efforts to secure the border resolutions have no force of law but are rather a statement expressing collective sentiment for action shortly after it passed in committee this morning, the full House adopted it.

77 to 17 yesterday, Kentucky Attorney General Russel Coleman, a Republican and blaming the Biden administration for the border crisis.

Joined a multi-state coalition backing Governor Abbott's actions.

♪ ♪ >> What does the future hold for?

Some flood damage property in Floyd County Kentucky.

Minor League baseball team is changing names again.

Our Toby Gibbs has more in tonight's headlines around Kentucky.

♪ >> The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved more than 1 million dollars to acquire properties in Floyd County affected by the 2022 floods.

According to FEMA, the Floyd County Fiscal Court will by the 9 flood-prone properties.

The Floyd County Chronicle reports the properties will be demolished and debris will be removed.

The properties will then become a green space.

The Floyd County Chronicle quotes officials as saying the projects will protect the community from future flooding.

The college's within the Kentucky Community and Technical College System will receive federal grants to develop high quality career vocational programs.

The Harlem Enterprise reports Big Sandy community and technical college will receive 1.8 million dollars.

Elizabethtown community and technical college will get 1.9 million and hazard community and technical college received 2.2 million.

The purpose of the world post-secondary and economic development grant program is to strengthen career pathways associated with high skill, high wage and in-demand industry jobs.

Baptist health will celebrate its centennial this year with 100 days of caring an effort to get back to the communities.

It serves the center like a report that just health is expanded.

Did 9 hospitals and more than 2700 licensed beds since its opening in November 1924. every month a child spittle will take part in community projects, which will include health screenings, neighborhood cleanup events and supply and food drives Baptist health as hospitals and local Paducah, Elizabeth Town, Lexington, Richmond, carbon LaGrange and Madisonville.

A Broadway actor from the Louisville area is home to perform in Disney's Frozen Louisville.

Public Media reports the Jack Brewer and grew up in Oldham County.

The production runs of the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts through February 4th.

Lexington's Minor League baseball team has new ownership and we'll get a new name WKU reports.

The team's new name mascot and uniforms will be announced at the Red Mile on February.

15th.

The team's new owner is temerity baseball, which owns 2 minor League baseball teams in North Carolina.

Original team founder Alan Stein says the new name will be the legendary saving.

The reference.

The teams, all name the Lexington Legends.

The team has recently been called the counter clocks.

With headlines around Kentucky.

I'm told the Good News.

♪ >> It's a big topic.

A lot of people are talking about what does artificial intelligence or AI mean for society, including businesses, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce hosted an AI summit Monday to address what the future could hold.

>> There's a lot of uncertainty around it and the public policy space.

There's some questions about making to the regulations in place to protect our citizens.

And so for our members over the last year, there has been a lot of questions the role of business that all government, where is all this going?

And I think the summit today is a really good start of these conversations.

>> A lot of the conversations we're having here around how these tools can be best leverage to enhance our organizations to enhance productivity, to enhance workers.

Lives are really relevant to my work, the university and for educating the next generation of the workforce we've been talking about at the summit in different ways is retaining a human agency in accountability.

What are the process that applies to a learning environment where student retains accountability for their learning 2 professional environment.

Were we retain accountability for the work that we do?

You can answer for that.

>> Today, what I really want to come out of it is people feeling a little bit more comfortable day out what it means for their business.

But also what government is doing to protect them from the things I see on the news and the thing that maybe we're in the bad about it.

Yeah.

>> What it does is it gives us, you know, as my fellow panelist discussed, superpowers and the way that we can have access to a lot of information, a lot of data and a lot of computational power to either help us make our decisions, analyze that data plug into different kinds of information or documentation from our organization and do our work more effectively so that we are freed up to do what we're actually there to do.

Industries are using this in and lots of different ways.

It's hard to pin down.

No one that's going to be, you know, benefited more so than others but what we did talk about is how perhaps frontline workers are going to be really affected by this technology in terms of what they're able to do more quickly, how they're going to be able focus more on the kind of tasks that demand their skills more.

Additionally, I'm seeing areas and health care.

That's a that soon This is going to even further revolutionize health care has been using AI for a long time.

But generative AI is a kind of slightly different animal and then also in areas such as Business Administration analytics, even law.

These areas are going to be kind of changed profoundly.

>> I think it's really important that innovation regulation go I really exciting and businesses are using it to harness that innovative spirit that we know here in Kentucky.

But we also want to make sure that businesses and taxpayers are protected from some of the things that we hear about.

>> We continue to have these open and big table conversations from different professions, disciplines and areas of expertise so that we can move that needle even further to better understanding how this relates to our human endeavors.

Our sense of what we want our future to be.

>> Important discussion.

Indeed.

Event organizers plan on hosting another AI summit in the future.

♪ The Central Kentucky Job Club is an effort by the University of Kentucky to teach people skills that will make them better job applicants.

The club is free, open to all ages and meets via zoom twice a month we talked with UK's director of career services about what the organization has to offer.

>> Americans are changing jobs about every 3 to 4 years by choice or not.

So we all need to be ready for next hop or move.

Sometimes we can plan for it.

Sometimes we can't.

So there are many things that we can be doing along the way to be prepared.

Doc Cups, been around since 2013.

As a career counselor.

Coming off the heels of the Great Recession, which was really from about 202,009, 2, 2012.

I saw a lot of individual clients who had lost their jobs very unexpectedly.

These were people that never imagined that they would be out of work.

It was heartbreaking.

People that had never had to look for a job before.

We're all the sudden worried about how they were going to make their mortgage payments.

And I thought something needs to be done to help so many people in our community that didn't know how to job seek.

And that's how job club came about.

The purpose of job club is to provide a positive place for people to connect, learn and get more focused on their job.

Search goals.

So ideally would we're targeting people that are underemployed laid-off people that are looking to make a career transition.

Also, we have a lot of baby Boomers, Gen Xers who are late late career.

That would like to try something totally new and they have no idea where to start.

So it's been fun to work with folks that are looking to reinvent themselves.

We've been fortunate to have wonderful speakers.

These are volunteer speakers from the community and beyond.

We often have professional speakers on topics from around the country that have joined us.

We do tap a lot of local employers in HR professionals as well as people that are in the training and coaching industry and other content.

Experts.

But each semester, we always have a program on how to write a better resume.

How do you like LinkedIn and interviewing?

It's it's helped a lot of people learn how to job search, learn how to write resumes and prove their interview skills, get more focused on their job search, learn how to use linked and it's been a wonderful community partnership.

>> Since it's Inception, Job Club has had over 10,000 participants.

Good job.

Well, that I do it for us tonight.

We hope to see you right back here tomorrow night at 6.30, Eastern 5.30, central for Kentucky.

Addition connect with us all the ways you see on the screen.

Follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram to stay in the loop to send us a story idea and public affairs at K E T Dot Org.

Some great stories tomorrow lined up for you.

So we hope to see you right back here again tomorrow night.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Take really good care.

Have a good night.

♪